Friday, July 13, 2018
When Comic Book Super-Heroes Saved Us From Edge City, Batman To The Rescue- The Scum Also Rises-Christian Bale’s Dark Knight Rises-(2012) –A Film Review
When Comic Book
Super-Heroes Saved Us From Edge City, Batman To The Rescue- The Scum Also
Rises-Christian Bale’s Dark Knight Rises-(2012) –A Film Review
DVD Review
By Leslie Dumont
Dark Knight Rises,
starring Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, 2012
[I noted in a recent
thumbs down film review of Joan Crawford and Clark Gable’s 1933 Dancing Girl which really turned out to
be just a freebie chance to get a lot of stuff off my shoulders since the film
itself took about thirty seconds to pan about what had been going on around
this publication in the short time I have been here. Here as a result of it
turns out a serious decision by new site manager Greg Green to change things
around, to get young women, younger everything if not yet more widespread
racial and ethnic diversity which the times and American social demographics
cry out writing major pieces rather than the old standard stringer role that
went on here for years. I have heard, mostly around the water cooler and mostly
from Seth Garth who has become something of a mentor to me, that some of the
older white writers have not been happy with this new regime, especially one Sam
Lowell who I am now locking horns with over what is really the direction of the
publication.
Frankly Greg has been
all over the place trying new ideas, some working and some even to a novice
like me just out of journalism grad school kind of crazy. I will give an
example because it directly affects how I wound up doing this review of one of
the endless DC Comics Batman sagas that has hit the cinemas. Greg, trying to
assert his authority as new site manager, after what appears to have been an
all-out bloodless blood-bath to remove former chief Allan Jackson who I really
want to talk more about since it turned out he was “resurrected” or according
to Seth who was involved in radical politics back in the 1960s with Allan
“rehabilitated” to do the successful encore of The Roots Is The Toots series had the “bright” idea to have the
older writers broaden their horizons by reviewing various Marvel/DC Comic
films. That set of assignments set up a firestorm among the older guys who
could not possibility sit through such fare much less understand why
hard-working parents are forced to refinance their homes to get tickets, deadly
soda and inane popcorn for their loving off-spring under penalty of
insurrection-or worse.
I freely admit I hope
that the thing would fizzle giving me a chance to do my thing with fresher eyes
and with a less draconian view of such films since they were a staple of one of
my journalism classes- The Rise of The
Blockbuster. As such thing were bound to do the older writers got squirrelly
about things and so Will Bradley, Maura Mason, Lenny Grace and I think a couple
of others, younger writers all got the assignments. But that is not the end of
the story although I have already detailed my “dispute” with Sam Lowell in that
last review mentioned above when he connived to get a prestige assignment away
from me and under Seth Garth’s guidance and mentorship screamed to high heavens
and got a couple of series of my own including the superhero comics work. Work
that I will like Sam did to me on that prestige series rewrite what others have
written in the interest of completeness. Since this one got lost in the
turnover I will start with the last saga of the Dark Knight trilogy. Sarah Lemoyne]
********
There is a lot the
average reader of film reviews, probably reviews of any kind at least
professional reviews about what goes on behind the scenes in the selection,
assignment and use of the editorial fist. Some of it is generic to any
organization but other things are subject to the whims of whoever is in charge.
The play of say the New York Review of
Books which goes for high-brow twisting reviews is very different from the
cloisters of the American Film Gazette which
in its long history has reviewed virtually every Hollywood and foreign film ever
made in its nearly seventy-five year existence. That who is in charge, who is
in charge here is my first point and for a reason having nothing to do with
this yet another super-hero comic book come to cinema Dark Knight Rises which frankly I thought had been abandoned once
the site manager, the guy who shapes and gives out the assignments here, heard
loud and clear from us peon writers that the mass audience for this stuff does
not, I emphasize, does not read film reviews in exotic flower publications
filled with plenty of other stuff they could care less about.
Greg Green, the guy who
shapes the contours of what gets into the public prints here after a grueling
internal battle in 2017 before I signed on thought, I believe in order to quell
the disquiet after that battle, to solidify his new position and create his own
brand, or maybe all of the above that reviewers should feel free, without
recrimination, to what old leftie the wizened and somewhat senile Sam Lowell
has called “fire on the party headquarters” meaning a reviewer can, if she or
he so chooses, go beyond the scope of the review and let readers get an insight
glimpse of what goes on in section of the publishing world. I have taken that
liberty here and without recrimination since it has seen the light of day. More
ominous thought, my second point stab, is why after all of the anguish and
gnashing of teeth by serious writers here are we going back to reviewing this
kids’ stuff, this comic book madness. That is where the whims and whatever
other fluff is going on in an editor’s head comes into play. Greg although he
acquiesced ready did believe that action-packed films, above all comic book
super-heroes were the wave of the future.
He suffered in silence
for a while apparently but once Black
Panther came out and he saw the gross ticket receipts he did a big
backslide. He called it “in the interest of completeness,” meaning that we
collectively had not reviewed every possible film in the genre. So here I am,
woe is me, doing hard time going on and on about what mind-numbing stuff I have
to review. I had to laugh when in a recent review of one of the million 007
James Bond films, another Greg Green pet project, Seth Garth brought back to
memory the old days in the industry when we got paid by the word and he, I,
would when we were lowly stringers trying not to starve “pad” our reviews with
plenty of stuff which had not much to do with the film and hope to not get
edited too badly. Now I have to write this extraneous stuff for a flat fee. And
I do so here.
This Superman, no,
Batman long drawn out film is the long- expected sequel to the first one in
this series. Stay with me on this since Batman like his buddy Superman has had
various reincarnations depending on a generation’s take on what will play, or
at least some half-baked Hollywood screenwriter’s idea of what will play,
beyond the bang-bang action a minute pace expected of these things. In the
first film Batman had taken the sword over the death of some do-gooder D.A. who
harbored evil thoughts although he had nothing to do with that good guy turned
bad guy’s demise. Except it allowed him, Bruce Wayne, Batman’s alter ego, to
hibernate in some isolated splendor out on mansion row and not worry about
scumbags and creeps returning to fair Gotham (the sky line of which looked
amazing like, ah, New York City), to wreak havoc and turn the place into a
cesspool of drugs, prostitution, gambling, shady deals and endless
corruption-again. A thankless task.
Maybe someday we will
reduce the scumbag and creep population to manageable size but for now every
crazy monomaniac with some dough and manpower sees such places as Western
Civilization urban areas as fair game, as merely a subject for spoils. Enter
one hellish brute Bane and his underground, literally underground, army ready
to reduce Gotham to their playground. This guy is relentless, tough and unlike
others who have tried to make an end run on the town had a plan, a plan beyond
total devastation if he does not get his way. So once word gets up to Mansion
Row Batman has the old flame lighted under his ass to save “his” city once
again. Save with the sometimes help, sometimes unhelpfulness of Cat Woman,
played by fetching Anne Hathaway breaking the mold of her girl next door looks who
has her own agenda, has her own rock to get out from under.
Like I said this Bane
really was a piece of work, really had his stuff together despite wearing a
weird semi-mask to alleviate ancient wounds. As the battled ensues on the first
go-round Batman shows some rust after that long hiatus and loses the round, is
taken prisoner never to be seen again. At least that is what Bane had thought.
Once Bane and crew take some action which includes having access to a nuclear
machine which can be turned into a weapon the town’s police force and its
general population accept the new regime for a while. At one point the machine
was in cold storage but a big- time woman environmentalist has taken charge and
so despite her the damn thing was weaponized. A few resistance fighters,
including Cat Woman in her better moments, pushed back until Batman escaped coming
back to town looking for creeps, scumbags and glory. Push back not only against
Bane and his thugs but that woman who controlled the nuclear button turned out
to be something like the big guy’s lover, or friend. So chaos looms, looms as
long as Batman can’t figure out how to get that freaking bomb out of Gotham
City’s harms’ way.
Bruce/Batman falls on
his sword again but really only off-stage in case there is to be another
sequel, the desire to make this yet another trilogy which seems to be the way
these comic book adventures go. Having said all that I hope, I really hope,
everybody can see what a forlorn task it is write this foolishness. I hope Greg
is listening-again. Just kidding but I wanted to show that I can do insightful film
panning just as well as moribund Sam Lowell, or whoever writes his stuff these
days
As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day 11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth -Ernst Kirchner
As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day
11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived
Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth
-Ernst Kirchner
By Seth Garth
A few years ago, starting in August 2104 the 100th
anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the
cultural effects, some of them anyway, of the slaughter which mowed down the
flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets, writers
and other cultural figures. Those culturati left behind, those who survived the
shellings, the trenches, the diseases, and what was then called “shell shock,”
now more commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is duly recognized,
and compensated for at least in the United States by the Veterans Administration
in proven cases reacted in many different ways. Mainly, the best of them, like
the ordinary dog soldiers could not go back to the same old, same old, could
not revive the certitudes of the pre-war Western world with it distorted sense
of decorum and went to what even today seem quirky with moderns like Dada, Minimalism,
the literary sparseness of Hemingway, and so on. I had my say there in a
general sense but now as we are only a few months away from the 100th
anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which effectively ended that
bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of creative artistic works by those who
survived the war and how those war visions got translated into their works with
some commentary if the spirit moves me but this is their show-no question they
earned a retrospective.
Happy, Happy Birthday Brother Frankenstein-On the 200th Anniversary Of The “Birth” of Mary Shelley’s Avenging Angel “Frankenstein”-A Comment
Happy, Happy Birthday Brother Frankenstein-On the 200th Anniversary Of The “Birth” of Mary Shelley’s Avenging Angel “Frankenstein”-A Comment
A link to a 200th anniversary discussion of Mary Shelley and her “baby” Frankenstein on NPR’s On Point.
http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2018/02/12/working-in-the-lab-late-one-night
By Lenny Lynch
We all know in the year 2018 that it is impossible to create a human being, maybe any being, out of spare stitched up human parts, and a few jolts of electricity. At least I hope everybody short of say Hannibal Lecter, Lucy Lane or some such holy goof who thought he or she could “do God’s handiwork” on the cheap, out of some “how to manual” knows the ropes enough to have figured that out. You have to go big time MIT scientist and MGH doctor routes running through DNA, RNA, genetic matching and such to do what back in the day only a scary primitive amateur guy working in some foreboding isolated mountain retreat would even dare to contemplate. Back in that 1818 day when Mary Shelley (she of the thoroughbred breeding via Earth Mother feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft and French Revolution-saturated anarcho- philosopher William Godwin and later channeling Romantic era poet husband Percy Shelley who hung around with ill-fated heroic Lord Byron and that crowd ) wrote her iconic classis Frankenstein former idea, the stitch and sew part, seemed pretty far out on the surface and would go on to sell scads of books to titillate and disturb the sleep of fevered.
I like the Modern Prometheus part of her title better since like I said science was pretty primitive on that count, not much better that the Greeks creation from earth’s laden clay process, about the way our brother was put together in a slapdash manner but provided an impetus to further discovery. Today where through genetic engineering we have a better understanding of science and medicine who knows what the possibilities are for good or evil. Although at times we need to treat science, maybe medicine too, like a thing from which we have to run. (Example, a very current example, running the rack on discovering everything there is to know about the atom and then have such a discovery threatening a hostage world with nuclear weapons once the night-takers latched on to the military possibilities. At that point running away from the results of the creation like cowardly Victor Frankenstein doesn’t mean a thing, not a thing.)
Still Mary Shelley was onto something, some very worthy thoughts about human beings, about sentient and sapient beings, about where women fit into the whole scheme of things if we can at the flip of a button create life without human intervention which has already accrued to us today in marginal cases and probably would have shocked her 19th sensibilities. A better result if humankind can make itself out of odd spare parts, a little DNA splicing here and there, that also puts a big crimp in the various ideas about God and his or her tasks once he or she becomes a sullen bystander to human endeavor. Not a bad thing not a bad thing at all. But the most beautiful part of her story is the possibility, once again, that we may get back to the Garden to retrofit that Paradise Lost that the blind revolutionary 17th poet John Milton lost his eyesight over trying to in verse form how we lost our human grace. Yeah, tell us that we might be able to get back to the Garden. Nice choice Ms. Shelley.
We know, or at least I know, that Frankenstein aka Modern Prometheus, has gotten a bad rap. Prometheus remember him from subtle Greek mythology and how he was able to create his brethren out of clay. Nice trick. Better, the brother did not leave humankind hanging by offering the gift of fire to move human progress at a faster clip. To keep the race from cold and hunger. Took a beating from psychopath Zeus for his lese majeste by having to roll that rock for eternity. Mister Frankenstein really has been misunderstood especially since the rise of the cinema starting from that first libelous presentation in 1931 which turned him from that misunderstood and challenged youth who was orphaned by a unfit “father” into a scary monster who made kids afraid on nighttime shadows on bedroom walls. There are a million ways that piece of bad celluloid got it wrong but if you will he remember actually learned English, despite being “born” out in the wilds of 19th century Germany, so movie audiences could understand what he was saying. Does that sound like a monster to you? I thought not.
The bad ass in the whole caper is this dolt Victor Frankenstein, the human so-called scientist who built a thing from which he had to run like some silly schoolgirl. If the guy had the sense that God, yes God, gave geese he would not have abandoned his brethren, his avenging angel. Wouldn’t have started a string of murders for which he not his so-called “monster” was morally responsible for. Instead the dink just let the bodies stack up like a cord of wood as he let his “creation” get out of control.
On this site my fellow writer Danny Moriarty has recently taken it upon himself to smash what he has called the unearned reputation of one Lanny Lamont, aka Basil Rathbone, aka Sherlock Holmes the so-called deductive logic detective who also let innocent bodies pile up before he got a bright thought in his dope-addled head about how to stop the carnage. That Danny’s take, Danny not his real name by the way but an alias he had been forced to use to protect himself and his family who have been threatened by a bunch of hooligans who are cultist devotees and aficionados of this Lanny Lamont known as the Baker Street Irregulars.
I don’t know enough about the merits of Danny’s crusade to decide whether he too is also an avenging angel, a blessed brethren in the fight for human progress against the night-takers, against the “alternate fact” crowd. But I do know that the idea behind what he is trying to do is solid. In his case the bare knuckle blowing up of an undeserved legend. This bicentennial year of the existence our beautiful Mister Frankenstein, the Old Testament avenging angel, I am proud to defend his honor against all the abuse he has taken for far too long. That may be a tough road but so be it.
Mary Shelley started something for us to think about on letting things get out of hand though and now we have to try to put the genie back in the bottle.
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Dearest Mommy Can’t Dance-Or Sing-Joan Crawford And Clark Gable’s “Dancing Girl” (1933)-A Film Review
Dearest Mommy Can’t
Dance-Or Sing-Joan Crawford And Clark Gable’s “Dancing Girl” (1933)-A Film
Review
DVD Review
By Sarah Lemoyne
Dancing Girl, starring Francot
Tone, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, 1933
[New Introduction-Sometimes
things happen for a reason, for the fates, maybe a portent, at least that is
what Seth Garth, my grandfatherly mentor here of late has told me (that “grandfatherly”
put in to cut off what is becoming an ugly insinuation that there is some kind of
undercurrent romance going on between us which is far from the truth as I have mentioned
before but which bears repeating since this workplace has a history of older
writers taking their stringers under their wings, despite age, marital status,
religion or race for nefarious purposes again according to Seth). This review
was supposed to appear several months ago when I first viewed it and turned in
my draft review.
Somehow, between Greg
Green’s undivided attention on doing the encore edition of a rock and roll series
entitled The Roots Is The Toots which
the previous site manager (or administrator, I think he was called but don’t quote
me on that since that was before I started here), Allan Jackson put together over
several years and trying to get a handle of a couple of new series this one
fell through the cracks. That is important because now that the dust has
settled on that rock and roll series Greg asked me to get it in shape for publication.
The happens to have dove-tailed with a “dispute” I am entwined in with occasional
reviewer Sam Lowell who old, senile and wizened as he is still thinks he can
write reviews, if he ever did in the past which is open to question, serious question.
I have been informed,
and I did the research to prove it, that Sam after he got his precious by-line
had stringers, mostly Leslie Dumont before she moved on to bigger and better things
and Minnie Moore who I don’t know what happened to her and Seth didn’t know either,
write his reviews and pass them in and/or he used studio publicity department
press releases and just chopped off the top and sent them in from whatever
watering hole or backdoor hotel he was hanging out in.
In a recent review of
Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba’s Molly’s
Game, a good film by the way which Sam essentially panned for no other reason
than hubris on this fast-paced and intricate film (and probably had his longtime
companion Laura Perkins who watched it with him and liked it write the review
and sent it in), he challenged my research. Not the truth of it but a couple of
lame excuses about how every stringer here had in those days, all female according
to Seth who admitted that his stringers were usually female as well, the hots
for him and/or everybody was doing the studio press release stuff on dog day films,
his expression but actually about right. I have not had time to get back to
Leslie, or to check the stringer employee records or see how many times Sam “mailed
it in” with studio press releases (he says a couple but who knows until we get
the stats). What is interesting is that the introduction I wrote below several months
ago when Sam was beginning his sabotage campaign to get the coveted Hammer
Productions series from the 1950s and 1960 reads like it was written by me this
week. That says it all and so I will keep it- More later I am sure-Sarah
Lemoyne]
******
[In my very first film
review after being hired here by site manager Greg Green I mentioned that this
was my first real job in journalism and that I was going to use the
introductory space to talk about myself and not go off on some tangent like
some of the older writers do rather than deal with the subject at hand. Which I
did. I also noted that not being wise to the various “traditions” in the
profession like starting out as a stringer I had a lot to learn. Well I am here
to bitch just like the older writers this time and to let one and all know that
I am a quick learner once the rug has been pulled out from under me by one
nasty old has-been Sam Lowell.
The source of my wrath
is centered on Sam, who is supposed to be retired and write an occasional review
to let younger and fresher voices come to the fore, who let it be known to Greg
Green that he was interested in doing the Hammer Production series originally
assigned to me. The series that had six psychological thriller in it from the
early 1960s mainly of which I had already done two which have been published
here Cash On Demand and The Snorkel. It seems that as a remnant
of the “good old boys” network that existed here under previous site manager
Allan Jackson that older writers meaning mainly those good old boys got “first
dibs” at any decent material. Sam, Judas-goat Sam by the way according to what
I heard about the faction fight that led to Jackson’s demise (although he is
here still puffing away at some nostalgia rock and roll thing that nobody under
about sixty cares one whit about) invoked that privilege and now not only will
he complete the series but will give an alternate review to the two that I did
have published. That sucks.
Worse if what Leslie
Dumont said is true about her time here when she was a stringer before she got
that big push of a by-line at Women Today
many years ago I will probably be writing the damn reviews while Sam gets on
his bong pipe or whatever dope keeps him from toppling over in his dotage or
runs away on some tryst with his flame Laura Perkins leaving me here to save
his sorry ass. In that first introduction I was, admittedly, naïve enough to
take Sam as a kindly old sot but like I said I am a fast learner, very fast. In
the meantime I have this dog of a film to review about creeps I never heard of
except maybe Clark Gable who my grandmother swooned over whenever his name was
mentioned about a million years ago. Sarah Lemoyne]
****
My good friend Seth
Garth, who has given me some good advice, told me that the 1930s and 1940s, my
grandmother’s time, was the golden age of musicals, musicals based on Broadway
shows or done with the music of well-known Broadway lyric and melody writers
like Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, the Gershwin Brothers and Barton Lane. Those
names provided by Seth since I only knew George Gershwin’s name from Porgy and Bess. He had me watch Babes On Broadway with him which he was
reviewing at the time and which has since been published as an example of real
talent lighting up the Great White Way with Mickey Rooney and especially Judy
Garland in the top roles. I could take my cue from that film and the two others
which made up the trilogy and throw in a couple of other Rooney-Garland
collaborations and would have the gold standard for the genre. (Bart Webber
said throw in the motherlode of Fred-Astaire and Ginger Rogers song and dance
flicks and you would not be steered wrong.)
Then there is this dog
of film Dancing Lady which must have
been produced by lead actress Joan Crawford’s lover or she had something on him
that his wife should not know about because however earnest Joan might have
been she could neither sing nor dance. Especially not dance with all her
flailing arms and out of synch motions which left me wondering what the heck
was going on. Of course the plotline (and star power Clark) would have
indicated that maybe this would be a better film than it turned out to be.
I have already moaned
and groaned about the poor song and dance (hell even Fred Astaire brought in
probably from desperation couldn’t make dear Mommy pop) so all we have left is
the story behind the story. Joan, from nowhere, meaning probably Hoboken,
dreamed the big dream of being a dancing fool on the Great White Way, on Broadway
but like a million other well-intentioned young women didn’t make a dent
although that did not stop her, or them, from needing food and shelter. Hence,
she started out down in the dumps, down in dime a dance, roller rink, burlesque
where she was “discovered by a young, wealthy Mayfair swell, played by Francot
Tone who didn’t want her to perform but to marry him.
They go on and on about
the matter but to his frustration and her sometimes annoyance she is committed
to her art. One way or another she used him to make a few contacts on the
street, on the Great White Way, and thus enter Patch, played by Clark Gable,
who is the primo musical director on Broadway. Needless to say they don’t get
along for a while until he sees her as his savior with her dancing and singing
skills. Let me tell you though old Patch is no judge of either such skills and
the real deal is that at the end after finally dumping Mayfair swell boyfriend
and making a smash hit on Broadway they become lovers-fade out.
I wish I could swear in
a review like Seth Garth or even Sam Lowell do when they have a stinker or
something that they cannot understand or make heads nor tails out of but I am a
lowly stringer working my way up the food chain as Bart Webber said he used to
say when he was moving up. But probably the only way I can swear is when Sam
Lowell, pretty please, asks me to do one of his Hammer Production film reviews
for him. You know I will then.
From The Lenin Internet Archives- Lenin And The Fight Against Imperialist War (1914-1917)-Principles Involved in the War Issue (1916)
From The Lenin Internet Archives- Lenin And The Fight Against Imperialist War (1914-1917)-Principles Involved in the War Issue (1916)
Markin comment:
It would seem almost unnecessary to comment on Lenin’s Bolshevik positions on imperialist war, as exemplified by his analysis of the war that he actually had to fight against, World War I. Those positions reflected his understanding that with that war the nature of capitalism had changed, definitively, from a progressive step for humankind to just a squalid, never-ending struggle among “thieves” for control of the world’s resources. It would have seemed almost unnecessary to mention this, that is, for earlier leftist generations who were familiar with his various slogans centrally-“the main enemy is at home” (adapted from German revolutionary Karl Liebknecht-“not one penny, not one man for the imperialist war”- “turn the guns the other way” (toward your own rulers)-and, specific to Bolsheviks- “fight for a new workers international, the Third International” (to replace bankrupt Second International).
Now, especially after the past several anti-war rallies that I have attended, I am not sure who among the attendees is familiar with his work. With all the pacifist, stop war in general, peace now, let all men and women be brothers and sisters rhetoric ringing in my ears I have to assume not. More importantly, I do not see such slogans (or anything close to them) emblazoned on any banners lately. Thus, in a month when we of the international communist movement honor Lenin anyway (along with the aforementioned Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the Rose of the revolution) this series will try to familiarize those who seek a better struggle against imperialist war than is being presented now with “red” anti-war positions.
*******
V. I. Lenin
Principles Involved in the War Issue
Published: First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVII. Written in German in December 1916. Translated from the German. Published according to the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 23, pages 152-160.
Translated: M. S. Levin, The Late Joe Fineberg and and Others
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2002 (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text • README
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Swiss Left Social-Democrats are unanimous in rejecting the defence of the fatherland principle in the present war. The proletariat, at any rate its best elements, is likewise opposed to defence of the fatherland.
Hence, on this most burning issue confronting contemporary socialism in general and the Swiss Socialist Party in particular, it would appear that necessary unity has been achieved. Closer examination, however, is bound to lead us to the conclusion that it is only seeming unity.
For there is absolutely no clarity, let alone unanimity, that a declaration against defence of the fatherland places exceptionally high demands on the revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary viability of the party that makes such a declaration, providing, of course, that it is not reduced to a hollow phrase. And such a declaration does become a hollow phrase if we merely reject defence of the fatherland without being fully aware of, i.e., without appreciating, the demands implied, without realising that all propaganda, agitation, organisation, in short, the sum total of party activity must be radically changed, “regenerated” (to use Karl Liebknecht’s expression) and adapted to the supreme revolutionary tasks.
Let us carefully consider what rejection of fatherland defence implies, if we approach it as a serious political slogan that must really be carried out.
First. We call on the proletarians and the exploited of all the belligerent countries, and of all countries faced with the danger of war, to reject defence of the fatherland. We definitely know now, from the experience of several of the warring countries, what this actually implies in the present war. It implies rejection of all the foundations of modern bourgeois society, the undermining of the very roots of the modern social system, and not only in theory, not only “in general”, but in practice, directly and immediately. Is it not clear that this can be accomplished only if we go beyond the firm theoretical conviction that capitalism has fully matured for its transformation into socialism and accept the practical, direct and immediate carrying out of such transformation, i.e., the socialist revolution?
Yet that is nearly always lost sight of in discussing refusal to defend the fatherland. At best there is “theoretical” acceptance of the fact that capitalism is ripe for transformation into socialism. But immediate, radical change of all aspects of party activity in the spirit of the directly imminent socialist revolution—that is shunned!
The people, it is alleged, are not prepared for that!
But that is ridiculously inconsistent. Either, or. Either we do not proclaim immediate rejection of defence of the fatherland—or we immediately develop, or begin to develop, systematic propaganda for immediate socialist revolution. In a certain sense the “people”, of course, are “not prepared” either to reject fatherland defence or accept socialist revolution. But that does not justify two years—two years!—of procrastination and delay in starting to systematically prepare them!
Second. What is being opposed to the policy of defence of the fatherland and civil peace? Revolutionary struggle against the war, “revolutionary mass actions”, as recognised by the 1915 Aarau Party Congress resolution. No doubt a very good decision, but ... but the party’s record since that congress, the party’s actual policy, show that it has remained a paper decision.
What is the aim of revolutionary mass struggle? The party has made no official statement, nor is the question being discussed in general. It is either taken for granted, or frankly admitted, that the aim is “socialism”. Socialism is being opposed to capitalism (or imperialism).
That, however, is absolutely illogical (theoretically) and void of all practical meaning. Illogical because it is too general, too nebulous. “Socialism” in general, as an aim, as the opposite of capitalism (or imperialism), is accepted now not only by the Kautsky crowd and social—chauvinists, but by many bourgeois social politicians. However, it is no longer a matter of contrasting two social systems, but of formulating the concrete aim of the concrete “revolutionary mass struggle” against a concrete evil, namely, the present high cost of living, the present war danger or the present war.
The whole Second International of 1889–1914 opposed socialism to capitalism in general, and it was precisely this too general “generalisation” that brought on its bankruptcy. It ignored the specific evil of its age, which Frederick Engels nearly thirty years ago, on January 10, 1887, characterised in the following words:
“...a certain petty-bourgeois socialism finds representation in the Social-Democratic Party itself, and even in the ranks of the Reichstag group. This is done in the following way: while the fundamental views of modern socialism and the demand for the transformation of all the means of production into social property are recognised as justified, the realisation of this is declared possible only in the distant future, a future which for all practical purposes is quite out of sight. Thus, for the present one has to have recourse to mere social patchwork...” (The Housing Question, Preface).[1]
The concrete aim of “revolutionary mass struggle” can only be concrete measures of socialist revolution, and not “socialism” in general. The Dutch comrades have given a precise definition of these concrete measures in their programme (published in the Bulletin of the International Socialist Committee No. 3, Berne, February 29, 1916): annulment of the national debt, expropriation of the banks and big industry. When we suggest that these absolutely concrete measures be included in an official party resolution, and be systematically explained in the most popular form, in day-to-day party propaganda at public meetings, in parliamentary speeches, in legislative proposals—we get the same procrastinating, evasive and thoroughly sophistical reply that the people are not yet prepared for this, and so on and so forth!
The point is, however, that we should begin preparing them right now, and firmly stick to this work!
Third, the party has “accepted” revolutionary mass struggle. Very well. But is the party capable of waging it? Is it preparing for it? Is it studying these problems, gathering together the necessary material, setting up the proper bodies and organisations? Is it discussing the issues among the people and with the people?
Nothing of the kind! The party clings to its old line—a thoroughly parliamentarian, thoroughly trade union, thoroughly reformist and thoroughly legalistic line. The party remains manifestly incapable of facilitating the revolutionary mass struggle and leading it. It is obviously making no preparations whatever for this. The old routine rules supreme and the “new” words (rejection of fatherland defence, revolutionary mass struggle) remain mere words! And the Lefts, failing to realise this, are not mustering their forces, systematically, perseveringly and in all fields of party activity, to combat the evil.
One can only shrug one’s shoulders on reading, for in stance, the following phrase (the last) in Grimm’s theses on the war issue:
“In conjunction with trade union organisations, party bodies must in this event [i.e., the calling of a mass railway strike if there is a danger of war, etc.] take all the necessary measures.”
The theses were published in the summer, and on September 16, the Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung,[2] issued over the names of its editors, 0. Schneeberger and K. Dürr, contained the following phrase (I was on the verge of saying, the following official reply to Grimm’s theses or pious wishes):
“...The phrase ‘the worker has no fatherland’ is in very poor taste at a time when the workers of all Europe, in their overwhelming majority, have for two years been standing shoulder to shoulder with the bourgeoisie on the battlefields against the ‘enemies’ of their fatherland, while those who remain at home want to ‘live through it’ despite all the poverty and hardship. Should we be attacked by a foreign power we shall doubtlessly see the same picture in Switzerland too!!!”
What is this if not “Kautsky” policy, the policy of the impotent phrase, Left declaration and opportunist practice, when, on the one hand, resolutions are proposed urging the party, “in conjunction with trade union organisations”, to call for revolutionary mass strikes, and, on the other, no struggle is waged against the Grütli, i.e., social-patriot, reformist and thoroughly legalistic, trend and its supporters within the party and the trade unions?
Are we “educating” the masses or corrupting and demoralising them if we fail daily to say and prove that “leading” comrades like 0. Schneeberger, K. Dürr, P. Pflüger, H. Greulich, Huber and many others hold exactly the same social-patriot views and pursue exactly the same social-patriot policy as the one Grimm so “courageously” exposes and castigates... when it concerns the Germans (in Germany) and not the Swiss? Rail against the foreigners, but protect one’s “own” “fellow-citizens”.... Is that “internationalist”? Is that “democratic”?
This is how Hermann Greulich describes the position of the Swiss workers, the crisis of Swiss socialism and also the substance of Grütli policy within the Socialist Party:
“...The standard of living has risen insignificantly and only for the top strata [hear! hear!] of the proletariat. The mass of workers continue to live in poverty, beset by worry and hardship. That is why, from time, to time, doubts arise as to the correctness of the path we have been following. The critics are looking for new paths and place special hope on more resolute action. Efforts are being made in that direction, but as a rule [?] they fail [??] and this increases the urge to revert to the old tactics [a case of the wish being father to the thought?].... And now the world war ... drastic decline in the standard of living, amounting to outright poverty for those sections which in the past still enjoyed tolerable conditions. Revolutionary sentiments are spreading. [Hear! hear!] In truth, the party leadership has not been equal to the tasks confronting it and all too often succumbs [??] to the influence of hot heads [??].... The Grütli-Verein Central Committee is committed to a ‘practical national policy’ which it wants to operate outside the party... Why has it not pursued it within the party? [Hear! hear!] Why has it nearly always left it to me to fight the ultra-radicals?” (Open Letter to the Hottingen Grütli-Verein, September 26, 1916.)
So speaks Greulich. It is not at all, therefore, a matter (as the Grütlians in the party think, and hint in the press, while the Grütlians outside the party say so openly) of a few “evil-minded foreigners” wanting, in a fit of personal impatience, to inject a revolutionary spirit into the labour movement, which they regard through “foreign spectacles”. No, it is none other than Hermann Greulich—whose political role is tantamount to that of a bourgeois Labour Minister in a small democratic republic—who tells us that only the upper strata of the workers are somewhat better off now, while the mass is steeped in poverty, and that “revolutionary sentiments are spreading” not because of the accursed foreign “instigators”, but because of “the drastic decline in the standard of living”.
And so?
And so, we shall be absolutely right if we say:
[[DOUBLE-LEFT-BOX-ENDS:
Either the Swiss people will suffer hardships that will increase with every passing week and they will be faced daily with the threat of involvement in the imperialist war, i.e., of being killed in the capitalists’ interests, or they will follow the advice of the finest part of their proletariat, muster all their forces and carry out a socialist revolution. ]]
Socialist revolution? Utopia! “A remote and practically indefinable” possibility!...
It is no more a utopia than rejection of fatherland defence in the present war or revolutionary mass struggle against it. One should not be deafened by one’s own words or frightened by the words of others. Nearly everyone is prepared to accept revolutionary struggle against the war. But one must visualise the magnitude of the task of ending the war by revolution! No, it is not a utopia. The revolution is maturing in all countries and the question now is not whether to continue to live in tranquillity and tolerable conditions, or plunge into some reckless adventure. On the contrary, the question is whether to continue to suffer hardship and be thrown into the holocaust to fight for alien interests, or to make great sacrifices for socialism, for the interests of nine-tenths of mankind.
Socialist revolution, we are told, is a utopia! The Swiss people, thank God, have no “separate” or “independent” language, but speak the three world languages of the neighbouring warring countries. It is not surprising, therefore, that they are in such close touch with developments in these countries. In Germany, things have reached a point where the economic life of 66 million people is directed from one centre. The national economy of a country of 66 million is run from this one centre. Tremendous sacrifices are imposed on the vast majority of the people in order that the “upper 30,000” can pocket thousands of millions in war profits, and that millions die in the shambles for the enrichment of these “finest and noblest” representatives of the nation. And in the fase of these facts, of this experience, is it “utopian” to believe that a small nation, with no monarchy or Junkers, with a very high level of capitalism and perhaps better organised in various unions than in any other capitalist country, will try to save itself from hunger and the danger of war by doing the very same thing that has already been practically tested in Germany? With the difference, of course, that in Germany millions are being killed and maimed to enrich a few, open the road to Baghdad, conquer the Balkans, whereas in Switzerland it is merely a matter of expropriating a maximum of 30,000 bourgeois, i.e., not condemning them to perish, but to the “horrible fate” of receiving “only” 6,000–10,000 francs income and giving the rest to the socialist workers’ government in order to ward off hunger and the war danger.
The Great Powers, however, will never tolerate a socialist Switzerland and will use their immensely superior strength to crush the socialist revolution at the very beginning!
That, undoubtedly, would be so if, first, the beginnings of a revolution in Switzerland did not generate a class movement of solidarity in neighbouring countries, and, second, if these Great Powers were not tied up in a “war of attrition” which has practically exhausted the patience of the most patient peoples. Military intervention by the mutually hostile Great Powers would, in present circumstances, only be the prelude to revolution flaring up throughout the whole of Europe.
Perhaps you think I am so naïve as to believe that such issues as socialist revolution can be resolved by “persuasion”?
No. I only wish to illustrate, and, what is more, merely one partial issue, the change that must take place in all party propaganda if we want to approach the question of rejection of fatherland defence with all the seriousness it deserves. That is only an illustration, and it concerns only one partial issue. I lay claim to no more.
It would be absolutely wrong to believe that immediate struggle for socialist revolution implies that we can, or should, abandon the fight for reforms. Not at all. We cannot know beforehand how soon we shall achieve success, how soon the objective conditions will make the rise of this revolution possible. We should support every improvement, every real economic and political improvement in the position of the masses. The difference between us and the reformists (i.e., the Grütlians in Switzerland) is not that we oppose reforms while they favour them. Nothing of the kind. They confine themselves to reforms and as a result stoop—in the apt expression of one (rare!) revolutionary writer in the Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung (No. 40)—to the role of “hospital orderly for capitalism”. We tell the workers: vote for proportional representation, etc., but don’t stop at that. Make it your prime duty systematically to spread the idea of immediate socialist revolution, prepare for this revolution and radically reconstruct every aspect of party activity. The conditions of bourgeois democracy very often compel us to take a certain stand on a multitude of small and petty reforms, but we must be able, or learn, to take such a position on these reforms (in such a manner) that—to oversimplify the matter for the sake of clarity—five minutes of every half-hour speech are devoted to reforms and twenty-five minutes to the coming revolution.
Socialist revolution is impossible without a hard revolutionary mass struggle in which many sacrifices have to be made. But we would be inconsistent if we accepted the revolutionary mass struggle and the desire for an immediate end to the war while, at the same time, rejecting immediate socialist revolution! The former without the latter is nil, a hollow sound.
Nor can we avoid hard struggle within the party. It would be sheer make-believe, hypocrisy, philistine “head-in-the sand” policy to imagine that “internal peace” can rule within the Swiss Social-Democratic Party. The choice is not between “internal peace” and “inner-party struggle”. Suffice it to read Hermann Greulich’s letter mentioned above and examine developments in the party over the past several years to appreciate the utter fallacy of any such supposition.
The real choice is this: either the present concealed forms of inner-party struggle, with their demoralising effect on the masses, or open principled struggle between the internationalist revolutionary trend and the Grütli trend inside and outside the party.
An “inner struggle” in which Hermann Greulich attacks the “ultra-radicals” or the “hotheads”, without naming these monsters and without precisely defining their policy, and Grimm publishes articles in the Berner Tagwacht larded with hints and only comprehensible to one out of a hundred readers, articles in which he castigates those who see things through “foreign spectacles”, or those “actually responsible” for the draft resolutions he finds so annoying—that kind of inner struggle demoralises the masses, who see, or guess, that it is a “quarrel among leaders” and do not understand what it is really all about.
But a struggle in which the Grütli trend within the party—and it is much more important and dangerous than outside the party—will be forced openly to combat the Left, while both trends will everywhere come out with their own independent views and policies, will fight each other on matters of principle, allowing the mass of party comrades, and not merely the “leaders”, to settle fundamental issues—such a struggle is both necessary and useful, for it trains in the masses independence and ability to carry out their epoch-making revolutionary mission.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
[1] See Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. I, Moscow, 1962, pp. 549–50.
[2] Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung (Swiss Metalworkers’ Gazette)—a weekly paper founded in Berne in 1902; adopted a social-chauvinist position during the First World War.
Markin comment:
It would seem almost unnecessary to comment on Lenin’s Bolshevik positions on imperialist war, as exemplified by his analysis of the war that he actually had to fight against, World War I. Those positions reflected his understanding that with that war the nature of capitalism had changed, definitively, from a progressive step for humankind to just a squalid, never-ending struggle among “thieves” for control of the world’s resources. It would have seemed almost unnecessary to mention this, that is, for earlier leftist generations who were familiar with his various slogans centrally-“the main enemy is at home” (adapted from German revolutionary Karl Liebknecht-“not one penny, not one man for the imperialist war”- “turn the guns the other way” (toward your own rulers)-and, specific to Bolsheviks- “fight for a new workers international, the Third International” (to replace bankrupt Second International).
Now, especially after the past several anti-war rallies that I have attended, I am not sure who among the attendees is familiar with his work. With all the pacifist, stop war in general, peace now, let all men and women be brothers and sisters rhetoric ringing in my ears I have to assume not. More importantly, I do not see such slogans (or anything close to them) emblazoned on any banners lately. Thus, in a month when we of the international communist movement honor Lenin anyway (along with the aforementioned Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the Rose of the revolution) this series will try to familiarize those who seek a better struggle against imperialist war than is being presented now with “red” anti-war positions.
*******
V. I. Lenin
Principles Involved in the War Issue
Published: First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVII. Written in German in December 1916. Translated from the German. Published according to the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 23, pages 152-160.
Translated: M. S. Levin, The Late Joe Fineberg and and Others
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2002 (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text • README
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Swiss Left Social-Democrats are unanimous in rejecting the defence of the fatherland principle in the present war. The proletariat, at any rate its best elements, is likewise opposed to defence of the fatherland.
Hence, on this most burning issue confronting contemporary socialism in general and the Swiss Socialist Party in particular, it would appear that necessary unity has been achieved. Closer examination, however, is bound to lead us to the conclusion that it is only seeming unity.
For there is absolutely no clarity, let alone unanimity, that a declaration against defence of the fatherland places exceptionally high demands on the revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary viability of the party that makes such a declaration, providing, of course, that it is not reduced to a hollow phrase. And such a declaration does become a hollow phrase if we merely reject defence of the fatherland without being fully aware of, i.e., without appreciating, the demands implied, without realising that all propaganda, agitation, organisation, in short, the sum total of party activity must be radically changed, “regenerated” (to use Karl Liebknecht’s expression) and adapted to the supreme revolutionary tasks.
Let us carefully consider what rejection of fatherland defence implies, if we approach it as a serious political slogan that must really be carried out.
First. We call on the proletarians and the exploited of all the belligerent countries, and of all countries faced with the danger of war, to reject defence of the fatherland. We definitely know now, from the experience of several of the warring countries, what this actually implies in the present war. It implies rejection of all the foundations of modern bourgeois society, the undermining of the very roots of the modern social system, and not only in theory, not only “in general”, but in practice, directly and immediately. Is it not clear that this can be accomplished only if we go beyond the firm theoretical conviction that capitalism has fully matured for its transformation into socialism and accept the practical, direct and immediate carrying out of such transformation, i.e., the socialist revolution?
Yet that is nearly always lost sight of in discussing refusal to defend the fatherland. At best there is “theoretical” acceptance of the fact that capitalism is ripe for transformation into socialism. But immediate, radical change of all aspects of party activity in the spirit of the directly imminent socialist revolution—that is shunned!
The people, it is alleged, are not prepared for that!
But that is ridiculously inconsistent. Either, or. Either we do not proclaim immediate rejection of defence of the fatherland—or we immediately develop, or begin to develop, systematic propaganda for immediate socialist revolution. In a certain sense the “people”, of course, are “not prepared” either to reject fatherland defence or accept socialist revolution. But that does not justify two years—two years!—of procrastination and delay in starting to systematically prepare them!
Second. What is being opposed to the policy of defence of the fatherland and civil peace? Revolutionary struggle against the war, “revolutionary mass actions”, as recognised by the 1915 Aarau Party Congress resolution. No doubt a very good decision, but ... but the party’s record since that congress, the party’s actual policy, show that it has remained a paper decision.
What is the aim of revolutionary mass struggle? The party has made no official statement, nor is the question being discussed in general. It is either taken for granted, or frankly admitted, that the aim is “socialism”. Socialism is being opposed to capitalism (or imperialism).
That, however, is absolutely illogical (theoretically) and void of all practical meaning. Illogical because it is too general, too nebulous. “Socialism” in general, as an aim, as the opposite of capitalism (or imperialism), is accepted now not only by the Kautsky crowd and social—chauvinists, but by many bourgeois social politicians. However, it is no longer a matter of contrasting two social systems, but of formulating the concrete aim of the concrete “revolutionary mass struggle” against a concrete evil, namely, the present high cost of living, the present war danger or the present war.
The whole Second International of 1889–1914 opposed socialism to capitalism in general, and it was precisely this too general “generalisation” that brought on its bankruptcy. It ignored the specific evil of its age, which Frederick Engels nearly thirty years ago, on January 10, 1887, characterised in the following words:
“...a certain petty-bourgeois socialism finds representation in the Social-Democratic Party itself, and even in the ranks of the Reichstag group. This is done in the following way: while the fundamental views of modern socialism and the demand for the transformation of all the means of production into social property are recognised as justified, the realisation of this is declared possible only in the distant future, a future which for all practical purposes is quite out of sight. Thus, for the present one has to have recourse to mere social patchwork...” (The Housing Question, Preface).[1]
The concrete aim of “revolutionary mass struggle” can only be concrete measures of socialist revolution, and not “socialism” in general. The Dutch comrades have given a precise definition of these concrete measures in their programme (published in the Bulletin of the International Socialist Committee No. 3, Berne, February 29, 1916): annulment of the national debt, expropriation of the banks and big industry. When we suggest that these absolutely concrete measures be included in an official party resolution, and be systematically explained in the most popular form, in day-to-day party propaganda at public meetings, in parliamentary speeches, in legislative proposals—we get the same procrastinating, evasive and thoroughly sophistical reply that the people are not yet prepared for this, and so on and so forth!
The point is, however, that we should begin preparing them right now, and firmly stick to this work!
Third, the party has “accepted” revolutionary mass struggle. Very well. But is the party capable of waging it? Is it preparing for it? Is it studying these problems, gathering together the necessary material, setting up the proper bodies and organisations? Is it discussing the issues among the people and with the people?
Nothing of the kind! The party clings to its old line—a thoroughly parliamentarian, thoroughly trade union, thoroughly reformist and thoroughly legalistic line. The party remains manifestly incapable of facilitating the revolutionary mass struggle and leading it. It is obviously making no preparations whatever for this. The old routine rules supreme and the “new” words (rejection of fatherland defence, revolutionary mass struggle) remain mere words! And the Lefts, failing to realise this, are not mustering their forces, systematically, perseveringly and in all fields of party activity, to combat the evil.
One can only shrug one’s shoulders on reading, for in stance, the following phrase (the last) in Grimm’s theses on the war issue:
“In conjunction with trade union organisations, party bodies must in this event [i.e., the calling of a mass railway strike if there is a danger of war, etc.] take all the necessary measures.”
The theses were published in the summer, and on September 16, the Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung,[2] issued over the names of its editors, 0. Schneeberger and K. Dürr, contained the following phrase (I was on the verge of saying, the following official reply to Grimm’s theses or pious wishes):
“...The phrase ‘the worker has no fatherland’ is in very poor taste at a time when the workers of all Europe, in their overwhelming majority, have for two years been standing shoulder to shoulder with the bourgeoisie on the battlefields against the ‘enemies’ of their fatherland, while those who remain at home want to ‘live through it’ despite all the poverty and hardship. Should we be attacked by a foreign power we shall doubtlessly see the same picture in Switzerland too!!!”
What is this if not “Kautsky” policy, the policy of the impotent phrase, Left declaration and opportunist practice, when, on the one hand, resolutions are proposed urging the party, “in conjunction with trade union organisations”, to call for revolutionary mass strikes, and, on the other, no struggle is waged against the Grütli, i.e., social-patriot, reformist and thoroughly legalistic, trend and its supporters within the party and the trade unions?
Are we “educating” the masses or corrupting and demoralising them if we fail daily to say and prove that “leading” comrades like 0. Schneeberger, K. Dürr, P. Pflüger, H. Greulich, Huber and many others hold exactly the same social-patriot views and pursue exactly the same social-patriot policy as the one Grimm so “courageously” exposes and castigates... when it concerns the Germans (in Germany) and not the Swiss? Rail against the foreigners, but protect one’s “own” “fellow-citizens”.... Is that “internationalist”? Is that “democratic”?
This is how Hermann Greulich describes the position of the Swiss workers, the crisis of Swiss socialism and also the substance of Grütli policy within the Socialist Party:
“...The standard of living has risen insignificantly and only for the top strata [hear! hear!] of the proletariat. The mass of workers continue to live in poverty, beset by worry and hardship. That is why, from time, to time, doubts arise as to the correctness of the path we have been following. The critics are looking for new paths and place special hope on more resolute action. Efforts are being made in that direction, but as a rule [?] they fail [??] and this increases the urge to revert to the old tactics [a case of the wish being father to the thought?].... And now the world war ... drastic decline in the standard of living, amounting to outright poverty for those sections which in the past still enjoyed tolerable conditions. Revolutionary sentiments are spreading. [Hear! hear!] In truth, the party leadership has not been equal to the tasks confronting it and all too often succumbs [??] to the influence of hot heads [??].... The Grütli-Verein Central Committee is committed to a ‘practical national policy’ which it wants to operate outside the party... Why has it not pursued it within the party? [Hear! hear!] Why has it nearly always left it to me to fight the ultra-radicals?” (Open Letter to the Hottingen Grütli-Verein, September 26, 1916.)
So speaks Greulich. It is not at all, therefore, a matter (as the Grütlians in the party think, and hint in the press, while the Grütlians outside the party say so openly) of a few “evil-minded foreigners” wanting, in a fit of personal impatience, to inject a revolutionary spirit into the labour movement, which they regard through “foreign spectacles”. No, it is none other than Hermann Greulich—whose political role is tantamount to that of a bourgeois Labour Minister in a small democratic republic—who tells us that only the upper strata of the workers are somewhat better off now, while the mass is steeped in poverty, and that “revolutionary sentiments are spreading” not because of the accursed foreign “instigators”, but because of “the drastic decline in the standard of living”.
And so?
And so, we shall be absolutely right if we say:
[[DOUBLE-LEFT-BOX-ENDS:
Either the Swiss people will suffer hardships that will increase with every passing week and they will be faced daily with the threat of involvement in the imperialist war, i.e., of being killed in the capitalists’ interests, or they will follow the advice of the finest part of their proletariat, muster all their forces and carry out a socialist revolution. ]]
Socialist revolution? Utopia! “A remote and practically indefinable” possibility!...
It is no more a utopia than rejection of fatherland defence in the present war or revolutionary mass struggle against it. One should not be deafened by one’s own words or frightened by the words of others. Nearly everyone is prepared to accept revolutionary struggle against the war. But one must visualise the magnitude of the task of ending the war by revolution! No, it is not a utopia. The revolution is maturing in all countries and the question now is not whether to continue to live in tranquillity and tolerable conditions, or plunge into some reckless adventure. On the contrary, the question is whether to continue to suffer hardship and be thrown into the holocaust to fight for alien interests, or to make great sacrifices for socialism, for the interests of nine-tenths of mankind.
Socialist revolution, we are told, is a utopia! The Swiss people, thank God, have no “separate” or “independent” language, but speak the three world languages of the neighbouring warring countries. It is not surprising, therefore, that they are in such close touch with developments in these countries. In Germany, things have reached a point where the economic life of 66 million people is directed from one centre. The national economy of a country of 66 million is run from this one centre. Tremendous sacrifices are imposed on the vast majority of the people in order that the “upper 30,000” can pocket thousands of millions in war profits, and that millions die in the shambles for the enrichment of these “finest and noblest” representatives of the nation. And in the fase of these facts, of this experience, is it “utopian” to believe that a small nation, with no monarchy or Junkers, with a very high level of capitalism and perhaps better organised in various unions than in any other capitalist country, will try to save itself from hunger and the danger of war by doing the very same thing that has already been practically tested in Germany? With the difference, of course, that in Germany millions are being killed and maimed to enrich a few, open the road to Baghdad, conquer the Balkans, whereas in Switzerland it is merely a matter of expropriating a maximum of 30,000 bourgeois, i.e., not condemning them to perish, but to the “horrible fate” of receiving “only” 6,000–10,000 francs income and giving the rest to the socialist workers’ government in order to ward off hunger and the war danger.
The Great Powers, however, will never tolerate a socialist Switzerland and will use their immensely superior strength to crush the socialist revolution at the very beginning!
That, undoubtedly, would be so if, first, the beginnings of a revolution in Switzerland did not generate a class movement of solidarity in neighbouring countries, and, second, if these Great Powers were not tied up in a “war of attrition” which has practically exhausted the patience of the most patient peoples. Military intervention by the mutually hostile Great Powers would, in present circumstances, only be the prelude to revolution flaring up throughout the whole of Europe.
Perhaps you think I am so naïve as to believe that such issues as socialist revolution can be resolved by “persuasion”?
No. I only wish to illustrate, and, what is more, merely one partial issue, the change that must take place in all party propaganda if we want to approach the question of rejection of fatherland defence with all the seriousness it deserves. That is only an illustration, and it concerns only one partial issue. I lay claim to no more.
It would be absolutely wrong to believe that immediate struggle for socialist revolution implies that we can, or should, abandon the fight for reforms. Not at all. We cannot know beforehand how soon we shall achieve success, how soon the objective conditions will make the rise of this revolution possible. We should support every improvement, every real economic and political improvement in the position of the masses. The difference between us and the reformists (i.e., the Grütlians in Switzerland) is not that we oppose reforms while they favour them. Nothing of the kind. They confine themselves to reforms and as a result stoop—in the apt expression of one (rare!) revolutionary writer in the Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung (No. 40)—to the role of “hospital orderly for capitalism”. We tell the workers: vote for proportional representation, etc., but don’t stop at that. Make it your prime duty systematically to spread the idea of immediate socialist revolution, prepare for this revolution and radically reconstruct every aspect of party activity. The conditions of bourgeois democracy very often compel us to take a certain stand on a multitude of small and petty reforms, but we must be able, or learn, to take such a position on these reforms (in such a manner) that—to oversimplify the matter for the sake of clarity—five minutes of every half-hour speech are devoted to reforms and twenty-five minutes to the coming revolution.
Socialist revolution is impossible without a hard revolutionary mass struggle in which many sacrifices have to be made. But we would be inconsistent if we accepted the revolutionary mass struggle and the desire for an immediate end to the war while, at the same time, rejecting immediate socialist revolution! The former without the latter is nil, a hollow sound.
Nor can we avoid hard struggle within the party. It would be sheer make-believe, hypocrisy, philistine “head-in-the sand” policy to imagine that “internal peace” can rule within the Swiss Social-Democratic Party. The choice is not between “internal peace” and “inner-party struggle”. Suffice it to read Hermann Greulich’s letter mentioned above and examine developments in the party over the past several years to appreciate the utter fallacy of any such supposition.
The real choice is this: either the present concealed forms of inner-party struggle, with their demoralising effect on the masses, or open principled struggle between the internationalist revolutionary trend and the Grütli trend inside and outside the party.
An “inner struggle” in which Hermann Greulich attacks the “ultra-radicals” or the “hotheads”, without naming these monsters and without precisely defining their policy, and Grimm publishes articles in the Berner Tagwacht larded with hints and only comprehensible to one out of a hundred readers, articles in which he castigates those who see things through “foreign spectacles”, or those “actually responsible” for the draft resolutions he finds so annoying—that kind of inner struggle demoralises the masses, who see, or guess, that it is a “quarrel among leaders” and do not understand what it is really all about.
But a struggle in which the Grütli trend within the party—and it is much more important and dangerous than outside the party—will be forced openly to combat the Left, while both trends will everywhere come out with their own independent views and policies, will fight each other on matters of principle, allowing the mass of party comrades, and not merely the “leaders”, to settle fundamental issues—such a struggle is both necessary and useful, for it trains in the masses independence and ability to carry out their epoch-making revolutionary mission.
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Notes
[1] See Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. I, Moscow, 1962, pp. 549–50.
[2] Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung (Swiss Metalworkers’ Gazette)—a weekly paper founded in Berne in 1902; adopted a social-chauvinist position during the First World War.
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